The Mystery Flu
by Sassenach082
Summary: Clint Barton is undercover as Aaron Cross. When Outcome virals him off his greens without his knowledge, his health rapidly deteriorates from a severe mystery flu and SHIELD freaks the hell out. Clint's life hangs in the balance. Natasha is not amused by this turn of events. Clintasha.
1. Injections

**The Mystery Flu  
**Chapter One: Injections

_**Genre**__: Gen, friendship, angst  
__**Rating**__: T for swearing  
__**Characters**__: Clint Barton as Aaron Cross, Natasha Romanoff, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Eric Byer, Marta Shearing, Donald Foite, others  
__**Pairings**__: Clint/Natasha  
__**Spoilers/Warnings**__: Pre-Avengers, pre-Bourne Legacy.  
__**Summary**__: Clint Barton is undercover as Aaron Cross. When they viral him off his greens without his knowledge, his health rapidly deteriorates from the mystery flu and SHIELD freaks the hell out. Natasha is not amused by this turn of events._

.

"You'll need to take off your jacket and your shirt."

Aaron Cross took a pause from analyzing every object in the too-familiar examination room as a way to entertain himself to raise cold, calculating gray-blue eyes to the balding scientist. The man—Dr. Donald Foite—immediately dropped his eyes and shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his gaze as sweat beaded on his brow.

It would have been amusing, if he didn't hate doctors as much as he did.

Those gray-blue eyes watched the doctor with the intensity and cold calculation befitting of a hawk as he moved around the room prepping things for Doctor Shearing. A part of him — the part that was annoyed he had to sit here like a plucked chicken awaiting an oven, completely at their mercy — took a savage amusement in the fact that Foite was looking at anything but him.

It was strange, Aaron supposed, as he pulled off his black leather jacket and gray T-shirt—seeing as his name wasn't actually Aaron. It wasn't Kenneth Kitsom, either.

In fact, Aaron Cross was just yet another alias that Clint Francis Barton had taken on over his years as an assassin for the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division (which Clint not-so-privately thought _really _needed a shorter name and/or acronym, not that Fury ever listened – SHIELD would work and sounded badass, but of course unless Fury came up with it, it was a no-go).

"Doctor Shearing will be with you shortly," Foite squeaked as he all but fled from the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

Slowly, he mentally rearranged himself from Cross to Barton and assessed everything around him with sharp eyes. He paid special attention to his file, sitting on the counter roughly eight feet away from him; nameless (of course) and adorned simply with the number five.

Internally, Clint scowled. At least where _he_ worked, he wasn't just a number: he was an asset, an agent, a _person_. He had a codename and a partner and a handler, not to mention a hard-ass boss, who genuinely cared about what he did every day. As far as Fury went, it was more because he was an asset, but when it came to Phil and Natasha, it was genuine concern.

When Fury had ordered him to do this damn operation, he had almost refused—_almost_.

It had been Phil who eventually talked him into it, and he'd accepted on two conditions: one being that he have constant communication with his employers, which was achieved through a communication device in his false molar; and the second being a tracker that monitored his vital signs so that they would always know where he was and if he needed medical attention (and just in case Byer decided to have him killed; that too).

It had taken an extensive report of Byer's questionable morals, an extremely detailed background story of one Kenneth Kitsom, volunteering to be blown up by a planted IED, and having to pretend to be all but mentally retarded for him to "enter" the program known as Outcome.

Fury wanted to know about the whole Jason Bourne mess, and he wanted to know yesterday. It was painfully obvoius that the whole mess had started in the first place thanks to an agency screw-up, when according to paper these programs weren't supposed to exist. The Director had known early on that he needed someone on the inside, and there were really only two agents in the organization who could pull it off flawlessly.

Clint knew that it was either him or Natasha, and considering all she had been through already at the hands of the Red Room, he wasn't about to force her to go through that traumatizing shit again. Fury had known he wouldn't refuse, because in his mind, better he go than Natasha. She'd worked hard enough to create a new life for herself, she didn't deserve to have it all ripped down because of some interagency screw up.

And so, he had become an Outcome agent. Or at least he had on paper. Officially he still belonged to SHIELD, not that the agency morons like Byer would ever have the clearance to be privy to that information.

If he was being honest, he had hated every minute of it.

Before SHIELD (because, honestly, who wanted to constantly repeat _Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division _a hundred times?) he had been a hitman for a year, killing for the sake of killing, killing because he had nothing left to live for. After what had happened to him at the hands of people he once trusted, after his own damn brother nearly killed him, he had thrown in his lot with the devil and killed and killed and killed.

Clint had known that while doing so, he had slowly been destroying what was left of his soul, but he had been powerless to stop. He had known perfectly well that it wouldn't be long before one of his employers turned on him and he ended up dead in a random international back alley somewhere. In fact, a small part of him had been hoping that it would end that way and soon, because then he wouldn't have to cope with the knawing emptiness within himself anymore.

Phil Coulson had jerked him out of that life and had offered him a new one: a life that utilized his "unique skillset", yes, but also one that allowed him to refuse the hit if he wanted to. That was SHIELD—if they were sending him after someone, it was for a damn good reason, and he was always specifically told _why _Fury or the Council wanted said person dead. He was shown solid evidence and encouraged to research it on his own, because if there was one thing Fury despised, it was blind followers.

Fury appreciated his mind, appreciated his skill. Sure, he'd been pissed when Coulson dragged him into the organization snapping and glaring like a caged animal, but his flawless scores on the marksmanship tests had spoken for themselves. Fury had actually thought he was cheating, until Clint offered to do the same tests again—blindfolded and with moving targets—and got the same scores.

Coulson had stood behind him, had slowly woven cracks through the walls he had built around himself, because in Clint's mind people you trusted always turned on you, tried to kill you, left you, or all of the above. Phil hadn't done that, even after almost five years of having the man as his handler. Phil never asked too much of him, and certainly never asked him to do something he _knew_ he couldn't handle.

For the first time since he was a very small child, someone had finally come along who cared enough to break his walls down, and for that, he owed Phil Coulson more than the older man would ever know. Because of Phil, he was finally atoning for all the red in his ledger.

Since his old life, Phil Coulson was the first person Clint had trusted wholly and completely.

Sure, Phil had to work his ass off for it, but he was a persistent bastard, Clint had to give him that. With time, Phil had become less of a handler and more of an older brother—the older brother he'd always wanted but never had.

_That _was valuable, and Fury had never even hinted at switching him to another handler. Of course, Phil Coulson and his never-ending patience were the only things on Earth that could handle Clint when he got into his moods or decided to defy authority with a particularly dramatic flare, but that was beside the point. It probably didn't help much that one of his favorite past time was pissing off Fury to the point that his eye twitched, mostly because he got a kick out of it every time.

Even when the Council sent him after Natasha Romanoff and Clint decided to bring her in instead of kill her, Coulson had stood firmly behind him. Oh, he hadn't been happy about it—in fact, he'd sworn up blue streak that had impressed Clint more than he cared to admit and threatened to kill him in ways that made even _him_ wince—but all the same his words to Fury had been stern, delivered in his usual I-have-no-tolerance-for-this-bullshit-interrogation-of-my-top-agent tone.

_I trust Agent Barton's judgment, sir, and if he says Romanoff will joins us, I believe him. I may not like it, and do not think for a second that he and I won't be having a conversation about this later, but I believe him. If he says she stays, she stays. I accept full responsibility for both Agent Barton and Natasha Romanoff, sir._

Clint had never accepted a mission that he hadn't thoroughly gone over with his handler first. Phil never lied to him, and he always stated his own opinions while giving Clint the information he needed to draw his own. Sure, he liked Fury, but he didn't _trust _fury. He trusted Phil, though. It was the least he could do, for all the repeated times Coulson had stuck his neck out for him and later, for Natasha, too.

Clint had never turned down an assignment, but he had never blindly accepted one, either. In the end, it had always been him who made the final call and took the shot with Phil's ever calm go-ahead.

And that was the problem with this assignment, Clint concluded.

Here, in this godforsaken place that he privately thought was run by a bunch of psychopath spooks, it didn't work like that. At Outcome, at the mercy of the United States government and some skinny little prick who likely sat behind a desk bitching about trivial shit all day, Clint didn't have a choice.

Outcome told him to kill and kill and kill, so he did. He hated it, he loathed it, he got sick over it—but he obeyed. He obeyed because SHIELD needed him to keep his goddamn cover.

At least he could pick and choose his targets by running them through Phil, who ran them through Fury. If they really were a threat, he took them out, usually with extreme prejudice. If not, Fury handled it and his targets vanished into new names and new lives. That, at least, made him feel a _little _better.

Sometimes, though, he didn't have time to do that and just had to _kill kill kill_. The only comfort he could garner from it was the fact that each and every name of every single victim went down on the black list against Byer and his agency spook psychobuddies.

Mostly it just made him sick that the government would order all this killing in the shadows and never own up to it; with the President in Washington blissfully unaware to the vipers that sat four seats down from him at staff meetings.

The door opening drew him from his thoughts, forcing him to abruptly shove Clint to the back of his mind and re-adorn the mask of Aaron Cross.

"Doc," he calmly greeted the pretty dark-haired woman as she entered.

"Mmm," she responded without looking at him, making a beeline for the table with his chart. "Have you been doing your blood draws?"

"Like a good little soldier," he deadpanned, wishing she would at least look at him. He was antisocial by nature, but even he was starting to long for some kind of human contact. Outcome didn't let him have interactions with people at any time, ever. Well, not unless he was being sent to kill them, anyway.

It _really_ made him miss Natasha and Phil. He flirted with Marta to keep up his usual behavior, even if he was internally imagining her a little shorter and with flaming red hair instead of brown.

Sharp eyes watched her prepping a syringe.

"Can I see your hand, please?" she requested as she finally turned to face him.

He lifted it obediently and ignored the feel of her glove-clad finger sliding gently over the rough callouses on his palms. The knife wound had scarred over and healed completely a long time ago.

"Oh, that has healed _well_," Doctor Shearing exclaimed with a half-smile. "Any diminished sensation?"

Clint resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Nope," he said instead.

She turned her back on him again and picked up the syringe, now filled with a clear liquid.

His heart skipped a beat as he forced himself not to swallow. "You trying to put me down, doc?" he asked her, only half-joking, knowing perfectly well that Phil was listening to his every word on the other end of the line.

"_Barton_?" Phil's voice says faintly, the hint of worry there.

Momentary annoyance stabs through him. He can't exactly respond with the doctor standing two feet in front of him. He would have to say it aloud, and no matter how quietly he did so, she would hear him and likely think him insane.

So, for Phil's benefit, he clicked his teeth together twice, the sign that all was well. A short moment later he heard Phil's sigh of relief and quiet order of, "_Keep me posted, Clint_."

Clint clicks his teeth again, just to give Phil some peace of mind. Marta's voice draws him back to the present and he refocuses his entire attention on her.

"Well, I'm afraid there's been a few gaps in your sample delivery, so…"

"Uh-oh," he remarks cynically as she injects the liquid into his IV. Honesty, the hell was wrong with these lab types? As if he had time to sit down in the middle of a firefight to draw his own fucking blood…

He can feel whatever it is taking hold as she gently grasps the side of his face and requests he start counting backwards from one hundred.

Feeling more like Clint than Aaron right about then (_holy shit he hates drugs_) his lips turn up ever-so-slightly as he obeys and starts to count backwards… in Russian. He idly wonders what Natasha would say if she could see him (_Clint shave you face it looks like something died there_) and realizes that these drugs are good if he's going this out of it this fast and _shitshitshit_—

Before his consciousness slips, he hears Phil's soft chuckle originating from the device planted in his molar, and he knows for sure that Natasha will hear about this.

/

**E/N**: So I was watching the Avengers the other day, and then I watched Bourne Legacy afterwards (I am going through a major Renner obsession at the moment) and realized… they could mesh together perfectly. It was like a beautiful light bulb moment, with the chorus of the angels and everything.

This was what my brain concocted as a result.

Summer, this is revenge for _Before Letting Go _and the emotional trauma you have subjected me to.

Also, warning for next chapter: prepare yourself for severe Clint feels.

Sassy out.

**REVIEWS MEAN FASTER POSTING FRIENDS!  
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR FEEDBACK.**


	2. Tremble

**A/N: **Forgot the disclaimer in the last chap, friends – just let me say I do not own _Avengers_ or _Bourne Legacy, _no matter how much I love both. Please don't sue, I'm a poor college kid.

/

**The Mystery Flu**  
Chapter Two: Tremble

Less than an hour later, Clint had left the facility and Doctor Shearing in his rearview mirror. It wasn't until he parked his motorcycle in the parking garage for his apartment building and started making his way down the street towards food that he realized something was terribly wrong.

Clint felt strange—kind of like his muscles had been dipped in fire and then electrocuted, over and over again. It started out as a dull kind of annoyance, and then started to spread.

"Coulson," he rasped, leaning against a building and ignoring the strange looks he was getting from passerby. He knew he sounded as bad as he felt, but it took every inch of his willpower to pry his jaws apart long enough to speak. Moving any muscle at that point is painful, more painful than anything he has felt in a long time, and _what the hell his muscles never do this whatishappening_—

"_What is it? What's wrong_?" Phil immediately responds, a trifle louder than usual as he picked up on the strain in his agent's voice.

"Hurts," he moaned, forcing his eyes to stay open. He was aware of sweat beading on his brow, of the fire starting again but hotter this time, and _oh God it's hot and it burns it __**burns**__—_

"_Barton, focus! Can you get to the safe house?"_

Clint grunted and changed directions, struggling to keep his body moving. It was like his muscular system was suddenly on strike, refusing to move the way he wanted it to, and responding with pain unlike anything he had ever felt before. Every movement of a muscle twinges through his entire body; it reminded him of the feeling when his limbs went to sleep after being still for too long except this was worse, much worse.

"_Your vitals are stable for right now, Clint. Your temperature is a little higher than normal but we won't know for sure until we get a good look at you, you just get to that safehouse and we'll handle the rest_," Coulson barked in his ear, adopting his no-nonsense handler tone.

On instinct he obeyed, forcing his body along, extremely thankful he hadn't traveled very far from his apartment building. People avoided looking at him as he struggled up the stairs, likely thinking he was high on some kind of drug. He didn't know how he managed, but next thing he knows he is in the elevator and pressing the button for the twelfth floor, breathing through his nose and trying to ignore the pain by thinking of other things.

It didn't really work.

At least he was alone on the elevator, he mused, as he stumbled out of it and towards his penthouse. He went through all the proper protocols and got into the penthouse apartment, collapsing against the wall as he struggled to breathe, every muscle in his body on fire.

The pain, god, the pain—it was like nothing he'd ever felt before. Agony ripped through his muscles, flexing them in excruciating unnatural ways and _fuck it hurts_, and then he was convulsing uncontrollably and falling to the floor and there is a loud noise but he doesn't know what it is because the blood is roaring in his ears and he can't breathe, _what the hell is making that noise_, and he needs to get up and call SHIELD, tell Coulson, he needs to do something, he needs to talk to Tasha, to Tasha_tashatashatasha_—

"_Tasha_," he moans, and promptly passes out.

/

**E/N**: Bahahaha, feels attacks are on a rampage . . . next time we get to see Coulson's reaction to this change of events. Let's just say that the normally unruffled SHIELD Agent has a minor panic attack and flips shit. xD

I regret nothing.

**REVIEWS ARE LOVE! :)**


	3. Crashing

**A/N: **Glad you guys are liking it this far! This chapter features Coulson, enjoy.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own it, I'm just playing with it.

/

**Chapter Three**: Crashing

In the control room of SHIELD, ten agents had been called in to monitor Agent Barton's wellbeing as soon as Clint's condition had started to change. They had his location up on one screen, his vitals on another, and were attempting to activate his security cameras but were having problems due to a weak signal. They would have to wait for the satellite to move closer before getting eyes-in on the apartment, and despite being on a flying fortress, Coulson was irritated because he wanted those images _yesterday_.

The sound of Clint's ragged breathing had long since started to worry Coulson. It hadn't taken him long to rapidly descend into _I-am-having-a-miniature-panic-attack _territory.

"Clint?" he said loudly, as he tried to gain his agent's attention. He heard the door open, heard the door slam behind Clint, heard something that sounds suspiciously like his agent falling to the floor.

There was silence for a long moment, and he prayed silently that Clint is fine, that he was getting up, that he just needed a moment to get his bearings—

Clint Barton's bloodcurdling scream shattered the tense silence in the command center and with it, all illusions that everything was going to be okay.

"CLINT?" Coulson shouted, gripping the edge of the table because _damn it he has nothing else to grab._ "Clint! Agent Barton! _Answer me_!"

"Sir, his heart rate is elevated," an agent called from the other side of the room. "His respiratory rate is lowering. His temperature has spiked to 99, sir, 100, 101 — "

Clint made a noise halfway between a scream and a sob, and everyone in the room froze.

This was Clint Barton.

This was _Hawkeye_.

The best marksman in the _world_.

The man who could hit any target with any weapon, no matter what the range, the temperature, the wind speed, or the angle.

The very same man who had been tortured for days on end without breaking or crying out even once.

Pain was a foreign concept to him.

To hear him scream, to hear him moan in pain, had every agent frozen in shock, because if it is bad enough to make Clint motherfucking _Barton_ scream, then it must be really damn bad.

And then his voice ripped through the room, ragged and broken, a plea that he would never speak aloud.

"_Tasha_," Clint moaned in a jagged rasp.

In that moment Phil knew that this had just gotten worse than they could have _possibly _imagined because Clint would _never _plead for her unless —

Icy coldness washed over him as Phil came to the horrifying conclusion.

"No," he breathed in horror. "_NO._"

Phil knew he needed to get his agent out _right fucking now_.

The door swished shut behind Coulson, who had sprinted out of the room without conscious thought and made a beeline for Fury's office. Fury was busy debriefing after the conclusion of a six month undercover mission.

Disregarding everything, he charged into the office, blew past Fury's secretary, and slammed through the doors without giving a damn about proper protocols. All he could think about was Clint and the voices in his ear telling him that Clint's vitals were crashing and crashing _fast_.

Fury is sitting at the conference table with the three agents who had been on the job. All of them— Fury included —look up at him in shock after his abrupt entrance.

Their eyes are wide, taking in the handler's appearance. Phil Coulson never looked haggard, and yet there he stood looking like he had just been put through a wringer. His hands were shaking, his breath was coming in ragged gasps, and his eyes were full of a fear they had never seen before.

Fury was standing before he was conscious of his actions, because only one person could make Phil Coulson lose his cool like this.

"Sir," Coulson said raggedly, not looking at anyone but his boss. "It's Barton. I think he's dying. I need Romanoff and an immediate quintjet transport, _now_."

/

**E/N**: I adore Phil Coulson. He is, in my opinion, the best thing about the Marvel universe besides Hawkeye and Widow, of course.

The guy can kill you with a sack of freaking _flour_, okay? Badass? I think yes.

**REVIEWS ARE ADORED ;D**


	4. Running

**Disclaimer: **NOT MINE!

/

**Chapter Four  
**Running

Natasha Romanoff was smiling and giggling at the man in front of her, batting her eyelashes and keeping the mark's attention on her. Sometimes, she wished it was a little harder to kill these types of men, but then again at least it was quick and simple this way.

Get him up to his room, kill him, leave, and be back with SHIELD to checkup on her long-time-undercover partner just before bedtime.

This time, SHIELD had sent her after a mob boss. He was just as disgustingly male as the rest of the men she had killed over the span of her young lifetime. The raving asshole had done little more than leer at her and stare at her breasts since she had walked up to introduce herself two hours ago.

She was smiling at all the proper pauses in his story, all the while planning the quickest way to kill him.

Should she be showy and go for the throat, or be practical and go for the quicker and less messy between-the-ribs-straight-to-the-heart stab?

Or should she just snap his neck with one carefully calculated twist?

Maybe she could just shoot him, but no; even with a suppressor that was too loud, too showy.

If Clint was with her as her silent eyes on the rooftops, he would know. He would suggest one way, usually with a witty remark that would make her smile—_really _smile—that special smile she reserved for him alone. He would then offer to take out the mark himself, and sometimes, on nights when she just wasn't feeling it, she would enjoy setting her prey up for his perfect shot.

Her partner never let her down on nights like that; he was still the only human on the planet she knew who could fire two bullets from almost a mile away through the same small hole in the glass and then they request to go out for pancakes afterwards.

Natasha had never understood his love for pancakes, but she never refused his company. A lot of agents in SHIELD found them both to be cold and heartless, but she knew better, and so did Clint. They did what they had to do, they did their job—they had to emotionally distance themselves from their targets, or they would have gone insane a long time ago. The time they spent together afterwards was how they reconnected with their humanity. Sometimes (most of the time, really) they didn't even have to do that, the bastards they were killing were so twisted and evil.

On nights when they took out truly cruel and evil members of humanity, they celebrated by going dancing. Clint was a fantastic dancing partner, and she never minded giving him the lead as he twirled her around the dance floor and looked at her like she was the most beautiful person on the planet. She adored just being able to close her eyes and trust him, knowing that she was in his capable hands. No matter how messy it had been, or if they had tortured the mark first; no matter how much blood they had scrubbed off each other's' hands, Clint's eyes never held any judgment.

That was just Clint, though.

Clint Barton wasn't like all other men. When men looked at her, they saw her beauty, they saw her body, they saw her curves—they saw her as someone to manipulate and use to their own ends, someone to lust after and control, someone to overpower. At SHIELD, men saw a terrifying but beautiful deadly weapon and watched her with wary judgment, because she was a spy and had killed more than everyone in the room combined. Most watched her wondering if she was ever going to turn on them and kill them in their beds, despite her unfailing loyalty to the organization.

But not Clint.

_Never_ Clint.

When Clint looked at her, there was none of the blatant need for possession in his eyes. There was want, and there was burning warmth that no other man had directed her way in her life. When he smiled at her there was a quiet affection shining through his stormy gray-blue eyes. Clint had never looked at her with judgment; he had just smiled at her and said something to make her laugh, or held her after her nightmares where she awoke feeling like she was drowning in blood.

He was the only man she had ever touched because she _wanted _to, and he was the only man she had willingly taken to her bed.

Natasha pushed away thoughts of her partner and hid her small frown—even on undercover ops, he checked in with her often. It was one of his endearing little quirks, one she found herself returning if only to assure herself that he was fine and because she knew it helped him focus. A small part of her also admitted that hearing his voice always made her feel better when they were separated.

She hated it when Fury sent them out on separate missions, because if she was being honest, she didn't trust anyone in SHIELD except for Clint Francis Barton. Occasionally and very rarely, she trusted Phil Coulson, and only then because _Clint_ trusted him.

The assignment she particularly hated was the one they had him on right now. The last time she had seen him, he had looked tired and haggard, stressed from the pressure of what he was being forced to do. A part of her hoped that this would be over soon so that he could come back to SHIELD and slip back into his usual routine. She hated sleeping when he wasn't around, it made her feel exposed and vulnerable without his sharp eyes to guard her back.

A sudden soft crackle in her ear partially distracted her from what the mark was saying.

"_Romanoff, you are pulled off this mission_," Coulson told her curtly. "_We need you somewhere else, _now."

Natasha skillfully hid her surprise. Pulling her off _now_? When Coulson had personally assigned her to this op and been the voice in her ear through most of it? Then she realized—something was off about his voice.

Her heart sank.

All she could think was _Oh God I don't even believe in you but please not Clint, never Clint, you can't take him away from me please please please—_

Those who did not know the Black Widow would never see the fear that flashed through her eyes, something so subtle that only the person she spent endless time with would notice the very subtle change. She had not felt before Clint, but now that she had, she knew he was the most important person in her life, because _he had given her a chance to start wiping the red off of her ledger_, something she had never dreamed she would be able to do. But more than that, he had been her _friend_, the only friend she had ever had in her entire life.

The next words all but stopped her heart in her chest.

"_It's Barton, Agent Romanoff. I think he's dying."_

Natasha excused herself from the mark's presence, pretending she had to use the restroom, and made a beeline for the back exit. She slipped from the façade of the slightly drunk party girl to the stone cold assassin; her movements became as fluid and graceful as a panther's.

"Where?" she said sharply, pushing out through the exit door and glancing around to get her bearings.

"_Not far from your position_," Coulson responded. "_I'll walk you in. Transport is five hours out. His vitals are not doing well. I'm en route in a quintjet and coming as fast as I can, Romanoff."_

Walking as fast as she could, Natasha followed Coulson's directions to the T.

Hell, it had been so long since she talked to Clint she hadn't even known he was in the same _city_. She reached the apartment building, realizing with a sick feeling that she had passed by it not four hours ago. Completely ignoring the elevator, she entered the stairwell and abandoned all pretense, kicking off her heels and sprinting as fast as she could up all twelve flights of stairs.

At the top she stopped for a second to take a breath before pushing on to the penthouse suite that was really a SHIELD safe house: Clint's safe house. His nest high above the city, so to speak, protected with one-foot-thick bullet resistance glass and everything an agent could ever need.

Natasha's hands flew over the controls as she pressed her hand impatiently and with more force than strictly necessary on the pad. The door clicked open and she slipped through it, closing it firmly behind her and glancing around frantically for any sign of her partner.

She didn't have to look long.

Just inside the door, her partner was sprawled—and it didn't look like he was breathing.

/

**E/N**: Bahahaha, I am evil. Next one coming soon! Faster, the more reviews I get. If you like it, please leave me a note! I love feedback! Also, kind of off topic, but Hawksickle, I laugh every time I read your user name. It is _awesome_!

**REVIEWS ARE LOVED. :)**


	5. Breathing

**A/N: **Hey all. Thanks for your continued support! And yes Hawksicle that was a compliment, it makes me giggle because I just picture one of the Avengers calling him that and his reaction. Dunno why, my brain is weird. xD I like it though very creative.

Anywhoo this one is quite a bit longer, seeing as I have quite a few tests next week and posting will likely be at least a week away, so this is me making up for that.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, sadly.

/

**Chapter Five  
**Breathing

Clint was just inside the door, slumped on the floor. His skin was unnaturally pale but his face was flushed from fever and slick with sweat. He _was _breathing, thank God, but his breaths were shallow and fast. As she watched, the muscles in his neck and throat quivered but his eyes didn't open. A pitiful moan slipped past his lips, one so wrenched with agony that it made her heart pound in reaction.

"Clint," she breathed, dropping to her knees beside him and reaching out to grasp his shoulders, gently rolling him onto his back.

It took her by surprise when his body arched upwards off the floor and a ragged scream tore from his throat. She leapt backwards and away from him in surprise, her hands shaking from the force of his reaction. As she watched in horror, his entire body convulsed until he rolled back over and tucked himself into a tight ball, moaning pitifully as tears streamed down his flushed face.

"Coulson, this is _bad_," she said aloud, reaching out to touch her partner's forehead. His smooth skin all but burned her hand to the touch.

His eyes didn't even flicker in response to her hand on his forehead.

Clint was _never _entirely unaware of his surroundings and he _never _screamed, not like this. An emotion that felt suspiciously like panic welled in her chest. Biting her lip in worry, she thumbed the tears off of his cheeks and forced herself not to freeze.

"_His heart rate is too elevated and his breathing too shallow,_" Coulson said curtly, and she could hear him steeling himself against emotion. "_His fever has spiked to 103.2 degrees. Focus on getting his fever down first. We're five hours out. You need to keep him alive until then. Can you do that?_"

"Coulson—"

"_CAN YOU DO THAT?" _he snarled, and she jerked her shoulders square in a knee-jerk reaction as if he were standing right beside her.

"I will," Natasha swore as she heard the connection go out. Coulson trusted her to keep him alive, trusted that she knew what she was doing. God only knew she had stitched Clint back together just as often as he stitched her back together. He was the only person on Earth she trusted near her with a needle, and she suspected it was the same for him.

She'd be damned if she let Coulson or Clint down now, after everything they had done for her. After everything they _continued_ to do for her, day in and day out, without hesitation.

Natasha left Clint just for a moment to head to the shower. She slammed the plug into place and immediately started the water, choosing a temperature that was cool but not so cold that it would shock his overheated body. She then hurried back out of the room to her partner's side, studying his clothes with a critical eye.

From what she had seen, she couldn't move him without causing him pain, and she would figure out _why _later. For now she just needed to figure out how to get his goddamn shirt of so she could get him into the water and get his temperature down.

"_Tasha_," he rasped deliriously as his eyes opened. The usually clear stormy blue-gray hue of his eyes is gone, replaced with a glassy dull blue that makes her swallow hard to mask her worry.

"I'm here, Clint," she whispered as she bent over him and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, ignoring the heat and dampness of his skin beneath her lips.

His fingers closed on her sleeve in a weak grip as his body convulsed again. For a moment she was terrified he had stopped breathing, until he sucked in a desperate breath and let out a pitiful moan, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes again.

Natasha bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, because this was Clint, her best friend, and damn it he was lying there _crying _from the sheer force of pain wracking his strong body and it made her so damn mad she could barely see straight. She swore right then and there that that bastard Byer would _pay _for this, and he would pay in blood.

"_Tasha_," he pleaded again. _"Hurts, Tasha..."_

"Right here," she repeated as she pulled out the knife and started to cut the clothing from his skin. He didn't notice or seem to apparently care, mumbling her name a few more times before falling silent. "I'm going to try to fix it, okay? I promise Clint, we'll get you out of this."

A sound halfway between a groan and a sob is his only answer as she peels the clothing off of him as gently as she can, doing her best not to move his muscles or jostle him as she does so. She can't tell for sure—she's no scientist—but the way his muscles are quivering and flexing is unnatural and slightly reminds her of someone having a seizure.

Clint's entire torso was slick with sweat, rising and falling rapidly in pace with his shallow breaths. She put one hand over his heart and closed her eyes for a moment to force back the panic at how rapidly it is beating beneath her fingers.

When she was pulling off his last sleeve, she accidentally bent his arm and was nearly thrown sideways when his entire body bent in upon itself, the muscles under his skin flexing in ways that looked detrimentally painful. She bit her lip to stem her own raging emotions and watched as the quivering stopped—_finally_—and he released a ragged gasp of a breath before slumping bonelessly back onto the floor.

"I have to move you to the shower," she whispered softly, and before she could talk herself out of it she hauled him upwards and supported his entire weight as he convulsed briefly and sucked in a shallow breath, his eyes rolling back for a moment as a grimace settled across his face. It frankly amazed her that he was still conscious, which could mean either the pain wasn't that bad, or the pain was so bad his body couldn't relax long enough to let him pass out. She wasn't sure which was worse.

Natasha maneuvered him down onto the edge of the tub and carefully eased him out of his pants and socks, leaving him in nothing but his boxers before gently easing him back into the cool water. He shivered in reaction as his teeth started clicking together. She watched the muscles in his jaw tense to a point beyond normal as he exhaled loudly through his nose and winced.

"God, Clint, what the hell did they do to you?" she whispered with tears in her eyes.

He seemed okay for the moment, so she took the opportunity to run to the kitchen and grab as many ice packs as she could hold as well as a pack of ace bandages before slipping back into the bathroom. Clint hadn't moved a muscle.

She slipped into the tub behind him and braced his back on her chest, guiding his head to slump against her shoulder. His eyelids flickered listlessly but he didn't open them. He tensed slightly at the contact and she silently prayed it wouldn't bring on another round of muscle spasms, but after a short moment she felt the tension start to drain out of him. She shifted her body slightly, bringing her knees up to hold him steady against her.

"_Tasha?_" he mumbled, and to her ears it sounded like a prayer.

"I've got you," she whispered in his ear, and his entire body relaxed for the time being, molding him to her.

Through the flimsy fabric of her knee-length dress she could feel the incredible heat his body was giving off and it worried her. She took advantage of his supple state and used the ace bandages to loosely secure ice packs at his neck and under his arms, where they would hopefully help to lessen his fever.

Natasha forced herself to calm down and stop being so affected by his physical state, but damn it, she had never seen him like this. Ever. And if she was being honest, it didn't just scare her a little, it scared her a _lot_. She suddenly had the urge to kill Fury for putting Clint at the mercy of this goddamn undercover assignment.

Byer was going to kill him if he kept this up, and nobody, not even SHIELD, would be able to stop her from bringing hell down on the slimy bastard's head. They had never spoken of it, but it is a kind of unspoken knowledge between them that they would follow each other everywhere, even into death. She would get her revenge, and then follow him into the endless sleep that was death.

Cursing under her breath, she forced those thoughts from her head—Clint Barton was _not _going to die today.

She pressed her cheek to his temple to gauge the temperature. It was lower, but not by much. She traced her fingers softly over his jaw and his chapped lips, pausing to feel his warm exhale on her fingers as an assurance he was, in fact, alive. The other arm was around the front of his chest, holding him to her and lending support while her hand rested over his rapidly beating heart to keep track of the beat.

He mumbled something against her fingers, but it came out as a jumbled mix of Swahili, Afrikaans, and French, and she couldn't make heads or tails of what he was trying to tell her.

Natasha stayed like that for a while, just holding him against her. His cheek was unnaturally warm beside hers, but his heart beat was steadying beneath her fingers. It is still far faster than she would have liked, but it was not the frantic pulse from before.

A small whimper escaped him as his abdominal muscles flexed. She gently pressed down on the affected area and found the muscles in question to be as hard and unyielding as steel. She winced in sympathy. Clint was going to be extremely sore after this, if he could move at all.

As abruptly as the muscles tensed, they relaxed. A fresh sheen of sweat was covering his too-pale skin as he exhaled shakily and blinked blearily up at the ceiling.

With gentle fingers that betrayed her tenderness, she soaked a wash cloth in the water and ran it down his torso, hoping to both cool him down and keep him from getting too sticky from sweat, a feeling she knew he secretly despised after all the missions Byer had sent him on in the desert. It was not until she was satisfied he was more-or-less clean that she wrung the wash cloth out—being careful not to jostle him as she did so—and reached behind her to run some fresh cool water into the tub with them. She used the clean water to soak a new washcloth and then wrung it halfway out before gently pressing it to his burning forehead.

Half-delirious with pain, Clint turned his head into her hand, pressing his forehead against the cool compress with a rumble of what she suspected was a jumbled sentence of backwards Swedish. It was hard to tell without him enunciating clearly, it could have easily been German or even Danish.

Forcing back the sudden urge to cry, she pressed a gentle kiss to the tip of his nose and soaked the cloth again, wiping the sweat off his face before rinsing it and pressing it back against his forehead.

"Tasha," he mumbled again through barely-moving lips as his eyelids flickered open, blue eyes searching out her green ones. She had always loved the shade of those eyes, had always loved their intensity and focus. "You came."

"Of course I came, idiot," she whispered back, keeping one hand over his heart while the other traced soft patterns from the corner of his jaw to his collarbone. It gave her a little hope that his eyes were a little bit more lucid than before. Not by much, but she could see more of her partner in those stormy gray-blue orbs, less glassed over by pain than they had been an hour ago.

"Thanks," he mumbled, and turned his head slightly more on her shoulder in an effort to find a comfortable spot. It seemed to work, because he relaxed further and inhaled deeply before exhaling, and she noted that his breathing was not as rapid as it was before.

Natasha didn't reply, and knew that Clint didn't expect one. She just traced her finger gently over the shell of his ear for a while before opting to run her fingers through his short hair instead, an action she knew from experience he found very soothing. She didn't care that his hair was matted with sweat, she just gently worked her fingers through the tangles, occasionally dipping her hand in the water to aid her.

"God, Clint, what a pair we make," she whispered, pressing another kiss to his forehead.

Clint's lips curved into a faint smile but he kept his eyes closed.

They stayed like that for a while, simply resting, until she wanted to get him on a flat surface that was more comfortable than a ceramic bath tub before he fell asleep using her as a pillow. He was mostly out of it as she gently maneuvered him back to a standing position, slinging one of his arms tight around her shoulders and looping her right arm around his waist to support his weight. In that fashion she managed to awkwardly half-walk, half-shuffle them both to his bed.

Clint groaned as she settled him down on the bed, but his muscles did not seem to be protesting the movement overly much, at least at the moment. Natasha ignored the blankets, ripping them off the bed altogether and dumping them in the corner of the room. She then headed to the kitchen to get a bowl of cold water and a fresh stack of wash cloths to use as compresses.

When she got back to his side, he hadn't moved or opened his eyes.

Natasha made a beeline for his dresser and rooted through his clothes, taking care to keep them neat and orderly. He was a bit of an obsessive neat freak, she had noticed over the years.

"You have to have a pair here somew—_aha_," she crowed in triumph, finding what she was looking for in the very bottom drawer tucked neatly to the far left. "Oh, Clint, you are as predictable as the sunrise sometimes," she smiled, glancing over her shoulder to find him still and quiet. She hoped he was asleep; his body could use the rest.

With a happy sigh she stripped off her soaked clothing and pulled on one of her plain black T-shirts and cargo pants. She wondered how he had gotten them, and decided she wouldn't put it past him to have broken into her room back at base and filched an outfit so that she would have something to wear if she ever stayed over.

Clint's inherent ability to be six steps ahead of people was a quality she found endearing, and occasionally annoying when applied to her. In this case though, she was thankful that he'd had the foresight to have something for her to wear on the off chance she'd decided to stop by.

She slid his closet open to find neatly arranged uniforms as well as a few civilian outfits for when he needed to blend in. Resting on the carpet to the left side of the closet was a silver case she knew held his spare guns, and resting on top of it lengthwise was a longer, rectangular case she knew carried his spare bow. The quiver was hanging on the back wall, hidden behind his dress uniforms. His boots and shoes were neatly lined up to the right, and out of curiosity she crouched, reaching into the back corner.

Sure enough, there were her old combat boots. He must have snatched them after he got her the new pair, before she could get rid of them. They were a little worn, but they were comfortable and broken in, so she borrowed a pair of his socks and slipped them on, lacing them up before dragging the desk chair over to the side of his bed and sitting down.

Wringing water from a fresh wash cloth, she pressed it tenderly to his forehead.

"_Heiß_," Clint groaned, shifting slightly as a fresh sheen of sweat broke out on his torso.

"I know it's hot," Natasha said soothingly, pressing the compress down a little tighter. She wet another cloth to wipe down his neck and chest, pausing over his heart to count the beats—one hundred and twenty; far, far higher than his normal resting rate of thirty-eight. "Your heart is beating pretty fast, Clint. Did they give you anything?"

"_Glaube nicht_," he rasped, though the statement came out more as a question. Natasha sighed; his use of German proved his brain was far from unscrambled at the moment.

"You don't think so, or you they didn't give you anything?"

"Dunno."

His chest was heaving now, his breath labored and uneven. She could see panic swirling in his gaze and put a hand gently on his cheek, which seemed to help calm him.

"Okay, alright, just stop talking," Natasha soothed, brushing her thumb over his eyebrow absently. His eyelashes brushed against her thumb as he closed his eyes, a shiver possessing him briefly.

His exhale was warm on her wrist. "Wa's happen', Tash?"

"We don't know, Clint. Coulson is on the way, we'll get you help, okay? You just need to stay alive for four hours. Just four. I'll be right here with you."

"'yer," he slurred blearily, blinking listlessly.

"What?" she whispered, leaning so close that the ends of their noses touched.

"'hr," Clint repeated, slurring even more. The muscles in his neck were doing something strange now. As she watched, his neck and jawline tensed and he swallowed hard enough to make his Adam's apple bob. His lips started to smack together, which she found odd and gave him a questioning look. He said nothing and swallowed several times in quick succession, so she passed it off as muscle spasms.

"Byer?" she guessed, and he blinked twice to nonverbally signal yes. "Fuck that asshole. He'll just have to get over you being off the grid. As far as I'm concerned, he can go to hell and—for heaven's sake, Clint, quit smacking your lips. Clint. _Clint_?"

The glassy look was back in his eyes. It happened in less than a second. One moment, he was looking at her and swallowing repeatedly, and the next, his entire body went rigid as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His body started to jerk violently like a puppet on the end of a string, except this was far more terrifying because it was _him, _and his muscles were quivering, which made him jerk harder from the pain as a high-pitched keening sound came from his throat.

Natasha's stomach bottomed out.

She had hoped the worst was over, but oh, was she wrong.

Five hours of sheer hell had only just begun.

/

**E/N: **Man, am I putting Clint through hell, or what? Hmm. Poor dude. At least he has Natasha to comfort him. I ship these two so hard it's not even funny; it ships itself, I swear. xD

**REVIEWS ARE LOVED!**


	6. Tears: Part I

**A/N: **Part II should come tomorrow, provided all goes well. Sorry this is so short; I have a test tomorrow and need to get back to studying but wanted to post this tonight. :)

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

/

**Chapter Six**  
Tears: Part I

Natasha's hands shook as she watched Clint's last convulsion before he went slack. She turned him onto his side and pried his mouth open to discover that he'd bitten through his left cheek.

"Byer is a dead man, Clint," she told him as she ran her fingers through his short hair. Her voice trembled, and in a detached fashion, she realized there were tears streaming down her face.

Damn Clint and his making her feel all this emotions bullshit.

Taking a deep breath, Natasha perched on the side of the bed, too afraid to move her partner. Her eyes never strayed from his face as the slightly blue tint faded to be replaced by the pallor from before. It didn't make her feel any better, but at least he looked less like a corpse now.

Forgoing her molar implant, Natasha reached over to activate the comm. system that existed in every SHIELD safe house. She punched in Coulson's personal code and hit CONNECT, waiting for a moment as first static came over the line and then a buzz, before a faint click and her handler barking, _"What happened_?"

"Seizure," Natasha said crisply as the video uplink finally went through and she could see Coulson. He was sitting with headphones on and he looked worse than she had ever seen him: his suit jacket was rumpled, his tie was crooked, and there were sharp worry lines on his forehead. Over his shoulder she could see the cockpit and the two pilots. If he noticed her wet cheeks, he tactfully refrained from mentioning it.

"Explain," her handler barked in a no-nonsense tone.

This, Natasha could do. She shoved emotion aside, but kept her hand resting on the side of Clint's face, unwilling to break contact. His breath was a warm brush on her thumb each time he exhaled.

"Barton was smacking his lips, and then he swallowed several times in short succession. He was unresponsive to verbal prodding. It only took another second or so for his eyes to roll into the back of his head. Seconds after that, he started jerking all over the place and his face slowly started to turn bluish in tint. It lasted for about two minutes, until his muscles finally relaxed. I rolled him onto his side, and he has yet to regain consciousness."

Coulson closed his eyes, looking very much like he was about to pass out. He swallowed, hard, and covered the mouthpiece while he turned to talk to someone over his shoulder. She watched his lips move, and concluded he was talking to the medical personnel on board. Finally, after about ten minutes of her absently stroking her hand through her partner's damp hair, Coulson turned back to her.

"Does he have a fever?" he asked, rubbing a hand over his forehead as if attempting to force away a building headache.

"It goes in and out. I got it down for a while, but I can feel it starting to spike again."

"And this is the only seizure he's had?"

Natasha nodded.

"The medics say he should regain consciousness in the next few minutes, and that he will be groggy and disoriented. Try not to let him move. Our scans of his systems indicate that _something _is attacking him on a cellular level, but we have no way of knowing until we can draw blood. If he doesn't regain consciousness in ten minutes, we need to be worried. The pilots found a way to max out engine efficiency, and we are cutting across civilian airspace thanks to Fury's involvement, so we should be there in just over three hours. Keep him stable until then. Can you do that?"

Having nothing better to do, she simply nodded again.

Coulson seemed to read her expression, because he said, "Clint will get through this, Natasha. He's strong, and he's stubborn, and he is not going to go out without a fight."

"I know," she said in a tone just as soft as the one he had used.

"One more thing. You need to make sure he gets his program meds."

That made her blink in honest surprise. "Program meds?" she repeated.

"He keeps them in a small gold container that resembles a dog tag around his neck. There are blue pills and green pills. He needs to take them every twenty-four hours."

Natasha looked to the pile of clothes she had stripped him of, and saw the object Coulson was talking about. "They have him on _drugs_?" she demanded as she stood and made her way over, scooping the thing up and sliding it open. The pills were tiny, one row of green and one row of blue, and there were none missing.

"Long story, I will explain when I get there. Has he taken them yet today? They give them refills at the labs. He should have taken his last two last night, and he'll need to take some in about," he glanced at his watch, "two hours. You need to make sure he does, even if you have to jam them down his throat. You understand?"

Her nostrils flared in anger, but she nodded woodenly. _Drugs. They had him on fucking _drugs!

"It's not what it sounds like, Natasha, I promise. Just keep him alive. Do you need me to stay on the line?"

"No," she said immediately and without pause. "Go back to working with SHIELD to try and find out what those bastards did to him."

With a brisk nod, Coulson reached out and terminated the signal between them.

Now all she could do was wait.

/

**E/N**: Review are love! xD


	7. Tears: Part II

**A/N: **Here's part two, enjoy! Disclaimer is the same as always!

/

**Chapter Seven  
**Tears: Part II

Clint returned to consciousness sluggishly. He felt like he was trapped in Jell-O. His muscles refused to respond to his brain's signals. For an eternally long moment panic spiked through him, until he managed to twitch his tongue and then grimaced at the taste of blood that coated it.

He blinked his eyes open cautiously and spat out the bloody saliva, groaning throatily as his body let him know just how much pain he was in.

"Easy," Natasha murmured. "You had a seizure, Clint."

"Yeah, noticed," he rasped, blinking slowly and staring up at her.

"Try not to move too much, okay?"

Not feeling like talking, he just grunted and did a mental assessment of his body. Every muscle ached, his head felt hot, there was sweat beading on his forehead, he'd bitten a good chunk out of his cheek and it was stinging like hell and still bleeding, his throat felt raw, and his head was pounding.

Lovely.

"Coulson and the medical team are about three hours out," Natasha told him. It sounded like she was shouting at him down a long tunnel; her voice was faint in his ears. "They don't know what's wrong with you, so they brought doctors to make sure you're stable for the trip back to the Helicarrier; she's headed for us and will be about an hour away when Coulson gets here."

Clint tried to answer, he really did, but his throat wasn't working and all he could do was stare up at her.

"Oh God, not again," she whispered as his vision started to fade.

/

The next time Clint came to, he felt even worse than he had before. He was rolled on his side, with bloody saliva filling his mouth. He coughed roughly, ignoring the spasm of pain in his abdominal muscles, as he spat the blood and skin and saliva shit from his mouth and took a deep breath through his nose. Something cool touched the side of his face, and he sensed rather than saw it was Natasha.

"They're almost here, Clint, just breathe, okay?"

He made a noise in the back of his throat that she seemed to understand was a question. His eyelids hurt too much to open, so he couldn't ask her with his eyes. Natasha understood though; she always understood.

Natasha's voice was shaking when she answered, "You had two more seizures, Clint."

_Two_? He didn't remember having two. He recalled the first one, and coming to from the one he'd just had. Worry started to filter through him; if he wasn't remembering it he must have been unconscious, and _that _was never a good sign.

The back of his throat tickled mercilessly. He coughed roughly, gasping as his muscles all protested with stabs of pain through his chest, back, and abdomen. It was like a chain reaction—coughing only made the tickling worse, which made the coughing come from deeper in his chest, which caused his muscles pain, which robbed him of his breath.

"Shit, Clint, you need to breathe!"

Clint flailed in panic as he felt his lungs begin to burn with protest, but he was coughing, and _shit he couldn't breathe_—

Small hands pounded his back, and the coughing stopped abruptly, allowing him to suck in air with the desperation of a drowning man. Those same hands reached over to cradle his face and slide under his back, and he felt his body being shifted upwards. Even then, he couldn't summon the energy to open his eyes. When she settled him down again, it was on pillows that propped him up slightly and it was a bit easier to breathe.

"I am going to fucking kill Byer, I swear to God," she whispered, pressing her hand to his forehead.

Too exhausted to do anything else, he just twitched his lips up into a faint smile and sucked in deep lungfulls of air. He had never taken breathing for granted — unfortunately most torture techniques involved water and simulated drowning of some kind or another, especially in the Middle East — but for now, he was just grateful that he was alive.

Or at least, mostly alive.

And then it happened—that feeling, passing through him again.

By sheer force of will, he pried his eyes open and stared up at her. "Tash," he rasped desperately.

She looked like hell. Her hair was disheveled, her complexion was pale, and her eyes were glassier than he'd ever seen them. At his voice rasping out her name, her eyes closed for a brief moment before she swallowed and looked at him with something in her eyes he'd never seen before.

"Again?" she whispered, and he blinked twice.

The swallowing started; his vision was going gray at the edges. He stared at her as long as he could before his body started jerking and everything went black.

/

Natasha felt like she'd been through emotional hell. It didn't matter how much she shoved her emotions to one side, seeing Clint in so much pain and completely out of control of his own body was the most horrible thing she had ever been forced to watch. She could withstand being forced to watch people torture him, because they had been trained to. Clint would be able to handle seeing her being tortured as well. Neither would like it, and both would want revenge, but they could handle it.

But this?

This was completely different.

Her heart felt like it was shattering, because this was _Clint Barton_—the man whose caustic humor and sharp wit hid his shyness, whose stormy blue eyes missed absolutely nothing, who preferred to stand back and quietly observe as everything fell apart. This was the man who had never cried out in pain, even while being tortured and nearly drowned; who had never screamed, not once, even when they laid hot pokers on his thighs.

The only human being she trusted on Earth, and in a lot of ways the toughest person she knew — completely out of control of his own body and as helpless as a newborn baby. Never mind the fact that he was in so much pain his throat was raw, and this from a man who only screamed under very specific circumstances.

Clint Barton was never vulnerable, not visibly. Yet here he was, his body jerking like a puppet whose strings had been cut and coughing so violently she was mildly surprised he hadn't coughed up a lung yet.

Natasha bent over him to press her lips to his forehead to gauge the temperature. It was spiking again, and he was shivering under a fresh sheen of sweat.

For the next hour she watched her partner's fever rage, struggled in vain to get his temperature down. She held him up over the trash can while he vomited and then dry-heaved twenty-seven times in a row, moaning incoherently when the spell finally passed and he slipped into semi-unconsciousness with his eyes flickering beneath his lids.

All she could do was swipe the cold washcloth gently down his face and hope that Coulson got there before shit really started to go downhill.

/

**E/N**: Reviews are loved!


	8. Rescue

**A/N: **Sorry this took so long guys. Life. School. Kill me now. Onward to torturing Clint some more, shall we?

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Also, I know nothing about medical stuff. Feel free to correct me! In a polite way, preferably, lol.

/

**Chapter Eight  
**Rescue

Natasha wanted to scream. She wanted to throw things. She wanted to hunt Byer down, gut him like a fish, and take his heart to Fury in a box with a ribbon around it.

Instead, she was forced to alternatively support her partner while he dry heaved over a trash can and blot his forehead with a cool washcloth. His fever was raging out of control again, and goddamn it, she _hated _feeling this useless. He'd become utterly delirious thirty minutes ago and alternated between calling out to phantoms who weren't there, screaming in various languages, and screaming things like "No" and "Why" and "Please, no, stop".

There were tears on her cheeks, but she didn't care. She just kept her hands on his cheeks and talked to him because it seemed to help soothe him inbetween his fits of seeing people who weren't there.

"I'm here Clint, you're fine, you're not there, shh," she whispered desperately as he trembled violently beneath her hands, his expression one of agony as tears streamed down his face.

"_Why, Barney_," he rasped, his hands held up, completely unaware of her presence. "_Why. I'm your brother!"_

He flinched beneath her, nearly throwing her hands off as he clutched his hands over his chest with a terrible scream.

Natasha smacked him firmly across the face, jarring him from his nightmare as he slipped into unconsciousness again.

Her phone dinged and she picked it up, holding it to her ear while the other held her delirious partner down on the bed so that he couldn't hurt himself. For the moment he was still, but the heat of his body beneath her palms was far too high. She felt his hands, worry spiking when they were ice cold to the touch. _Oh god no. Please no, not when Phil is so close_, she begged silently, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

"Romanoff," she barked, keeping the strain out of her voice by sheer force of will.

"_We're five minutes out_," Coulson responded with forced calm.

"Hurry up, Coulson," she said, keeping the plea out of her voice. "His heart rate spiked ten minutes ago and now it's dropping rapidly. He's hallucinating and his fever is off the charts. His hands and feet are cold. We're running out of time."

It was a tense five minutes of her keeping him on the phone. It was dark outside. Had it always been? She couldn't remember anymore. At least this safehouse was in one of the more obscure parts of the neighborhood and wouldn't notice a quiet, low-flying jet.

The door clicked, and Natasha sagged in relief as Coulson charged in with two guys in medical scrubs hot on his heels. They promptly gripped Clint under his arms and knees and shifted him over to a stretcher, buckling him down firmly and shouting medical mumbo-jumbo at each other.

"We've gotta go, Coulson, his BP is 50/40 and his heart rate is dropping fast," the taller of the two barked, not waiting for an answer as they ran out the door and up the stairs to the roof, settling him instantly in the Quintjet. Natasha paused only long enough to grab his bow case and her go bag before slamming the door to the safe house shut and thundering up the stairs after them.

Pale as a sheet, she buckled the harness in place and could only watch hopelessly as they strapped an oxygen mask over his face and hooked him up to an IV. Around his neck they strapped a cervical collar to prevent him from potentially hurting himself. In moments, he all but disappeared beneath all the tubes and wires.

It terrified Natasha that his eyes didn't even flicker.

"BP still dropping," one of them said, voice standing out amongst all the other mumbo-jumbo. They gave him a shot of something that seemed to help, but Natasha was numbing herself to it. Her eyes were glued on her partner, her ears straining to hear the beeps that registered his faint heartbeat.

Natasha shared a look with Phil, who was as still as a statue beside her, his reaction much the same. This was more than just an agent for him, this was his _little brother. _Their expressions displayed nothing, but each could easily read the terror in each other's eyes.

And, for the first time since she'd become a SHIELD Agent, Natasha reached out and slipped her fingers through her his, squeezing at first timidly. He blinked in surprise before he squeezed back, until they were nearly crushing each other's fingers, but it was contact. Contact between the two people on earth who cared about Clint, and who were terrified he wouldn't pull through this.

Together, they watched the situation become direr.

"He'll make it," Coulson said with a fierceness in his words she'd never heard before. "He's too damn stubborn to let a stupid needle get him down."

As he spoke, Clint's heartbeat skipped, making them crush their hands together so hard both started to lose circulation in their fingers. Neither noticed. It was their only grip on sanity, both sets of eyes glued on Clint's face, silently begging him to get his stubborn ass in gear.

"He'll make it," he repeated fervently, and her lip quivered as she silently hoped the same thing.

It was the longest hour long flight of their entire lives, as Clint teetered in and out of stabilization. It seemed to elude the medics; just when they thought they'd gotten him stabilized something else would go wrong. It was like watching their worst nightmares playing out right in front of them and being powerless to stop it.

Clint's stubbornness seemed to wear out a minute before they touched down on the Helicarrier.

His body gave one jerk before falling still, and the only sound that filled Natasha's ears was the shrill scream of the machine hooked up to Clint's chest as he flatlined.

/

**E/N**: I am evil. Ehehehehehe.


	9. Fury

**A/N: **This just flowed. Two updates in one day, this is some kind of record. All the same, I couldn't keep you guys hanging. Got 7 reviews, so figured this was good enough.

**Disclaimer**: The characters aren't mine. Sadly. I wish they were. Have you _seen _Clint's arms? *fans self* I mean, really.

/

**Chapter Nine  
**Fury

Clint was still flatlining when they landed. Her partner was pale and listless as the medics went into full-scale panic attacks and screamed medical mumbo jumbo at each other. She knew the image of him so lifeless would be burned in her memory forever, swallowing hard as she strapped the oxygen mask over her face.

The plane had landed. The ramp dropped a moment later, and seconds after that, there were more doctors running up towards them, shouting things her ears no longer registered. She'd read their lips as they said _CHARGING ONE HUNDRED_, before putting those paddles on her partner's flushed chest.

Unable to stop it, she had flinched alongside Clint when his entire body jolted, his back arching upwards.

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

The tears formed in her eyes then. From a combination of emotion or forcing herself not to blink, it was impossible to tell.

"Come on, Clint," Phil was chanting, not even daring to take a step towards his downed charge in fear of getting in the way of the people desperately trying to save him.

They'd charged again, causing her to flinch in unison as her partner's body arched upwards a second time, his hand flopping lifelessly over the edge of the stretcher. Those big hands, so strong and sure, completely lax, long calloused fingers dangling towards the floor. Her heart clenched, wondering if he would ever get to hold a bow again. She shoved that thought aside instantly, locking it back in the far corner of her mind.

They shocked him a third time. His body arched so badly that his entire frame shuddered from head to toe before collapsing. _As if he needed more things to fuck up his muscles at this point_, she thought bitterly.

Everyone held their breaths.

A faint beep. A line skittered upwards on the EKG, but it was _there_.

Once sure his heart wasn't going to randomly stop, they switched him to a gurney and strapped him down again, wasting no time in running down the ramp towards medical.

Natasha could have cried, but she forced herself not to. Now was not the time to show weakness. She and Coulson were right on their heels as they sprinted into the Helicarrier, making a beeline for medical.

"Agent Romanoff, Agent Coulson, this is as far as you go," a no-nonsense nurse announced, standing before the doors that had just swung shut after Clint.

She opened her mouth to argue, but Coulson simply pulled her away and urged her to sit down in the chairs against the wall.

And then they settled down to wait.

/

The SHIELD medical wing was something avoided at all costs by the agents of the organization. Nobody _liked _being in medical—everything was too white, the beds were like sleeping on concrete, it was always cold, the nurses were bitches, and the doctors were all secretly sadists who liked to stab them with needles with far more force than was necessary.

Natasha sat still as a statue, staring at the doors to the operating rooms without actually seeing them. Currently, she was in a state of mild shock. Her lack of sleep combined with her fear for Clint and the stress of struggling to keep him alive had finally caught up with her and her mind was shutting down, trying to urge her to sleep.

She didn't want to sleep.

What if she woke up and he was gone? Just like her family, all those years ago in that fire.

Exhaustion tugged at her mind, but she shoved it aside. No time to think about that now. Not when her partner could be dying.

/

Hours passed. Coulson and Natasha both adamantly refused to leave, even when summoned by Fury for a debrief and to, in Fury's own words, "_explain this clusterfuck of an undercover mission right the fuck now before I fucking shoot someone, preferably Byer"_.

Both knew that the Director would eventually come to them. He'd also probably be pissed to hell. Surprisingly, for once in his life, Phil couldn't summon the energy to give a fuck.

When the doors in their right peripheral vision swung open, both agents noticed. Neither removed their gazes from their fixation on the doors that led to the surgeons and other shit that went on back there. The very same doors that would hopefully open soon with good news about getting Clint stabilized.

Fury strode towards them with his usual purposeful stride, his black trench coat swirling around his knees and ankles with every step he took. As usual his arms were folded and tucked behind his back, his expression stern. The eye patch only made him look fiercer.

Coulson idly wondered if he knew that Clint referred to him as "Cyclops" nine times out of ten. Never to his face, though, usually behind his back.

He probably knew, Coulson decided.

Nick Fury didn't miss much.

"Agents," Fury greeted them in a voice tinged with . . . well, fury.

"Director," they chorused in the same flat tone without looking at him.

Fury's eyebrow twitched. The constant silent communication and/or creepily perfectly chorused sentences had gotten on his nerves hundreds of times, not that he would ever tell his Golden Trio that. It was like the three of them were on the same fucking brainwave all the time. Half the time listening to their recorded missions was a waste of goddamn time—Barton always knew what Romanoff was going to do before she did and Romanoff was nearly as good as predicting what Barton would do. That damn sarcastic asshole of a kid's insight was creepy as hell.

They didn't call him Hawkeye for nothing, that was for sure. Those blue-gray eyes didn't miss _anything_.

"Does somebody want to tell me what the fuck happened?" he wondered in a deceptively mild tone. He shoved his worry for the kid aside, considering the other two members of the trio looked like shit. He was pretty sure Coulson was still in the same suit he'd been wearing when he'd burst into his office hours ago. "And elaborate on why one of my top two agents is currently on the verge of death?" he added to get their attention.

_That _made their eyes snap to his.

"I ordered them to wait to report on his condition," Fury sighed, his shoulders sagging suddenly. "I figured it would be better coming from me."

Coulson and Natasha were so tense they were literally vibrating. Green and blue eyes bored into him, demanding answers.

"They lost him twice on the table," he informed them in his best I-am-the-Director-of-this-institution-so-do-not-fu cking-interrupt-me voice. Good thing these two knew better than to say anything; Barton would have likely been insulting him by now. "He is marginally stabilized. The doctor will be out to see you when they are sure, but for now, it is all very touch and go. You two should go take a shower, get some sleep. He is out of the woods for now."

"No," they chorused again, that same flat tone causing him to harrumph in frustration. Well, he'd fucking _tried_. These three idiots were more stubborn individually than the entire organization combined; together, they were nothing but a constant fucking migraine.

Fury sighed in defeat and snapped his fingers, gesturing at the two agents who had accompanied him. "Figured you'd say that," he said evenly, dropping into the seat beside his right-hand man as the doors swung open and two junior agents hurried in with bags of food. He passed one to Phil and one to Natasha, opening his own to eat a French fry, waving the agents off and fixing his one good eye on the doors.

"Sir?" Coulson said uncertainty, staring down at the bag emblazoned with his favorite burger joint's name. He opened the bag tentatively to find French fries and a burger just how he ordered it normally. Was he surprised Fury knew his order? Not a goddamn bit.

"Just shut the fuck up and eat your dinner, Phil," Fury said gruffly, not even glancing at him. "And stop fucking calling me 'sir,' it makes me feel old, you little shit."

Phil obediently crunched on a French fry to hide his smile. He had been hungry, a little bit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha do the same.

Fury cared, all right. He didn't like to show it, but he cared.

And he proved he cared, by staying up with them for the duration of the night in a silent vigil, awaiting the prognosis of one of SHIELDs top two field agents.

/

**E/N**: Had to throw in some Fury there, guys. He's not sentimental, but you can bet your ass he's going to be pissed as hell that the US Government screwed with _his _agent without _his _say-so. Pissed Fury is scary Fury. Scary Fury is you-are-all-dead Fury.

Fury is _awesome_. All arguments are invalid.

**Reviews are loved!  
C'mon, can I get some extra ones for posting so quickly? Pretty please? ;)**


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